


She Didn't Tumble After

by dreamkist



Category: Jack and Jill (Nursery Rhyme), Rumpelstilzchen | Rumpelstiltskin (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Fractured Fairy Tale, Gen, You Have Been Warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 00:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14629815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist/pseuds/dreamkist
Summary: In a small house that the sun’s light never seemed to reach, lived a young girl named Jill.  She was a sweet girl who worked hard and did as she was told, but she didn’t receive any sweetness in return.





	She Didn't Tumble After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



In a small house that the sun’s light never seemed to reach, lived a young girl named Jill. She was a sweet girl who worked hard and did as she was told, but she didn’t receive any sweetness in return.

It hadn’t always been so bad. Her brother, Jack, had been nice to her when they were younger. They had been friends who helped each other with chores and in keeping their mother happy. Their mother could be mean, but she had paid less attention to them in the past when their father was still alive.

They didn’t have much. They lived in a small house away from the rest of the town on the hill. Jill did some weaving that she sold, and sometimes their mother would take in other people’s babies when they couldn’t keep them anymore. She made enough money by doing that to pay for her medicine.

Their mother frequently sent them up the hill to bring her medicine home which they gladly did because she was cross when she didn't have it. The children tended a small garden and cleaned the house. Jack didn’t like the babies they took in, so Jill saw to them. These children would often get sick and didn’t make it. Jill thought it was because of the dreary and loveless house they had come to, so she tried to give them love.

A young woman left her child with Jill’s mother one day. He was a feverish and noisy baby, and he bothered their mother with his cries. Jill watched their mother give him some of her medicine until he was quiet. When he would wake up again Jill would try to calm him, but her mother continued to give him medicine.

When her bottle was empty Jack and Jill made one of their frequent trips up the hill. Jill noticed an odd man leaning against a building near the doctor’s house. He was short, wore a crooked smile on his face, and the day’s long shadows seemed to hang like a cloak about him. She felt his eyes following her as she passed, but she quickly forgot about him.

The children arrived home and delivered the bottle. Jill went to check on the baby who was quiet. She saw that he would be quiet forever. An empty bottle lay beside him.

“Such a shame,” her mother said from her chair at the table.

The lifeless body kindled a fire inside of Jill. It was unfamiliar but it warmed her. It felt like the breath of life in the face of cold, still death.

Jill wrapped the blanket around the boy and went outside. As she had done for other babies, she dug a small hole for him to rest in. She picked a pretty spot by wildflowers and buried him there.

One day, on their way back down the hill, Jack tripped and fell. His head was cracked by a rock, and Jill wondered if he was alive, but he began to move and stood up. He had been carrying the bottle and it broke during his fall. Jill glanced at the three coins in her small fist and knew they wouldn’t be enough to buy more.

Mother would be mad.

When they worriedly reached home and told her what had happened she yelled and jerked Jack toward her to look at his wounded head.

“Worthless,” she uttered. She poured a pot of vinegar over his head, and he cried as it seeped into his broken flesh and burned him.

Jill stood frozen in place as she watched. Moving might draw her mother’s attention to her, and she didn’t want to do that. But her mother turned to her anyway.  
“Go back to the doctor,” she told Jill. “Tell him we need the medicine, and he can take his payment how he sees fit.”

Jill didn’t want to go and her mother’s words left her unsettled. She almost refused to do it but didn’t want to anger her more. She went outside and as she walked by the trees she saw something move between them. She stopped and watched for the movement. She saw it again and walked into the woods to see what it was.

As she approached an old tree with a large trunk, the shadowy man she had seen on the way to the doctor emerged from behind it.

“Where are you going, child?” he asked in a singsong voice.

“I have to go to the doctor for my mother’s medicine,” she told him.

“Medicine?” he said. “I have just the medicine she needs right here,” he patted his coat. “I guarantee it will take care of her. What will you give me if I take care of her for you?”

“I don’t have anything to give,” she told him.

“That’s not true,” he said. His eyes watched her closely.

She remembered her mother’s words, but something kept her quiet. She didn’t know what to do.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he offered after the silence drew on. “Promise me your brother and you will never have to worry about her again.”

She realized what the man meant then. This was her chance. Promising Jack to this man would be easy. In return she would be free from her mother’s cruelty. Jill only spared a momentary thought to what the man wanted with Jack before she agreed.

The man pulled a bottle that looked just like the doctor’s bottles from his coat. “Here, give her this,” he said. “It will do the trick.”

She took the bottle and he walked away through the trees.

She lingered in the woods until enough time had passed for her mother to believe she had gone up the hill and come back down. She went home and up the stairs where she silently handed the bottle to her mother and watched her drink its contents down.

Nothing seemed to happen as her mother lay back down, and Jill was disappointed. At least the bottle seemed to contain the right medicine, and her mother didn’t notice that anything was different about it.

She went about her chores until evening when she prepared their meal and put Jack’s bowl in front of him at the table. She went to see if their mother was awake as she would be mad if she missed the meal.

Jill climbed the stairs and approached the bed with a lifted candle. Her mother had a familiar stillness to her body. Jill reached out and touched the cold flesh and knew the medicine she had bargained for had worked.

Glad, she went downstairs and ate her food.


End file.
